Another puzzler

[kavlor]

Just like jmervyn, my vast intellect and incredible knowledge distracted me too much from the easy solution .

I figured out something which is actually correct, but which didn't explain why children could solve it if they don't know numbers, so I wasn't sure enough about it to consider it as reliable.

You might of found the answer the way I did but there is another way and why it's children who would get it.I found the easier way by googling which I think is alright if you already figured the answer(the actual answer not the formulae).

[kestegs]

It gave you all the info you need to figure it out. The most important part was that you need no math skills besides basic counting (due to age that can solve it)

Once you start thinking in that mindset it really should be pretty simple to figure out.

[kavlor]

Ah makes more sense what Krischan was talking about,as in counting not basic mathematics.Its actually more logic based than mathematics if you solve it the other way(unless theres yet a 3rd way hidden in it).

[Technomancer]

HAHAHA!! I looked at that for about 10 minutes last night, and was like "whatev'!" I looked at it again now for just a couple of minutes and figured it out! That's evil!!

[Stevinator]

So is the answer 2? because i think i found a pattern that works, and its really stupid, but the comments in here make me think I got it.

and yes, it would not have happened without the hint that kids are better. I was all off checking even / odd, prime numbers, variations of adding and subtracting etc. The 0000=4 line kept thwarting all my theories.

[jmervyn]

and yes, it would not have happened without the hint that kids are better. I was all off checking even / odd, prime numbers, variations of adding and subtracting etc. The 0000=4 line kept thwarting all my theories.

That's the thing; there's no doubt once you recognize that it has nothing whatsoever to do with the representation of the numbers themselves.

[Shadowtwin]

Well, I also got the right answer in about 5 minutes. Then I googled the answer and found that I got to it the wrong way. That said, if it takes a programmer an hour to get it as a straight logic problem they are probably in the wrong line of work.

[jmervyn]

That said, if it takes a programmer an hour to get it as a straight logic problem they are probably in the wrong line of work.

Well, pattern recognition is a very useful characteristic in a programmer, but I don't believe it is essential. It's like mathematics; I wasn't a great programmer because I have poor simple math skills, yet my pattern recognition and linguistic skills are top notch.

Before anyone asks, I cheated per my OP because I was lazy and curious; I didn't really try to solve it. I love "bar puzzles" too...

[kavlor]

I think it's more that if it was worded in a more truthful way the clue wouldn't of worked,obviously it didn't work on some of us anyway.

I think that I like doing logic problems made me do it the way I did but I don't particularly like solving riddles.

[BobCox2]

Try this:
http://projecteuler.net/

ID	Description / Title	Solved By
1	Add all the natural numbers below one thousand that are multiples of 3 or 5.	210251
2	By considering the terms in the Fibonacci sequence whose values do not exceed four million, find the sum of the even-valued terms.	173808
3	Find the largest prime factor of a composite number.	126456
4	Find the largest palindrome made from the product of two 3-digit numbers.	116550
5	What is the smallest number divisible by each of the numbers 1 to 20?	129898
6	What is the difference between the sum of the squares and the square of the sums?	131550
7	Find the 10001st prime.	111186
8	Discover the largest product of five consecutive digits in the 1000-digit number.	98318
9	Find the only Pythagorean triplet, {a, b, c}, for which a + b + c = 1000.	98385
10	Calculate the sum of all the primes below two million.	89490
11	What is the greatest product of four adjacent numbers on the same straight line in the 20 by 20 grid?	67765
12	What is the value of the first triangle number to have over five hundred divisors?	59889
13	Find the first ten digits of the sum of one-hundred 50-digit numbers.	66492
14	Find the longest sequence using a starting number under one million.	64463
15	Starting in the top left corner in a 20 by 20 grid, how many routes are there to the bottom right corner?	52995
16	What is the sum of the digits of the number 21000?	70449
17	How many letters would be needed to write all the numbers in words from 1 to 1000?	44446
18	Find the maximum sum travelling from the top of the triangle to the base.	44899
19	How many Sundays fell on the first of the month during the twentieth century?	40933
20	Find the sum of digits in 100!	67286
21	Evaluate the sum of all amicable pairs under 10000.	44492
22	What is the total of all the name scores in the file of first names?	41683
23	Find the sum of all the positive integers which cannot be written as the sum of two abundant numbers.	30380
24	What is the millionth lexicographic permutation of the digits 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9?	36452
25	What is the first term in the Fibonacci sequence to contain 1000 digits?	49999
26	Find the value of d < 1000 for which 1/d contains the longest recurring cycle.	25396
27	Find a quadratic formula that produces the maximum number of primes for consecutive values of n.	26891
28	What is the sum of both diagonals in a 1001 by 1001 spiral?	38501
29	How many distinct terms are in the sequence generated by ab for 2 ≤ a ≤ 100 and 2 ≤ b ≤ 100?	33019
30	Find the sum of all the numbers that can be written as the sum of fifth powers of their digits.	35635
31	Investigating combinations of English currency denominations.	24769
32	Find the sum of all numbers that can be written as pandigital products.	21689
33	Discover all the fractions with an unorthodox cancelling method.	23200
34	Find the sum of all numbers which are equal to the sum of the factorial of their digits.	31390
35	How many circular primes are there below one million?	28611
36	Find the sum of all numbers less than one million, which are palindromic in base 10 and base 2.	31263
37	Find the sum of all eleven primes that are both truncatable from left to right and right to left.	23734
38	What is the largest 1 to 9 pandigital that can be formed by multiplying a fixed number by 1, 2, 3, ... ?	19890
39	If p is the perimeter of a right angle triangle, {a, b, c}, which value, for p ≤ 1000, has the most solutions?	23393
40	Finding the nth digit of the fractional part of the irrational number.	26760
41	What is the largest n-digit pandigital prime that exists?	21957
42	How many triangle words does the list of common English words contain?	26206
43	Find the sum of all pandigital numbers with an unusual sub-string divisibility property.	17917
44	Find the smallest pair of pentagonal numbers whose sum and difference is pentagonal.	17348
45	After 40755, what is the next triangle number that is also pentagonal and hexagonal?	25004
46	What is the smallest odd composite that cannot be written as the sum of a prime and twice a square?	18249
47	Find the first four consecutive integers to have four distinct primes factors.	18236
48	Find the last ten digits of 11 + 22 + ... + 10001000.	43762
49	Find arithmetic sequences, made of prime terms, whose four digits are permutations of each other.	17591
50	Which prime, below one-million, can be written as the sum of the most consecutive primes?	19060

Pre-schoolers